An intrustion prevention system (IPS) is a network security appliance designed to analyze the flow of network traffic in order to detect and prevent exploitation of system vulnerabilities, such as malicious attacks on a network. Many network appliances, including an IPS, may be required to operate in a high-availability model. The high-availability model refers to a system that is required to be operational for a long period of time. For example, industry standards may require a component to be operational 99.999% of the time for the component to be considered high-availability.